


The Tales The Old Men Tell

by MJ (mjr91)



Category: Doctor Who, Torchwood
Genre: DoctorDonna, Donna Noble - Freeform, F/M, M/M, tenth doctor - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-25
Updated: 2012-04-25
Packaged: 2017-11-04 07:42:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/391415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mjr91/pseuds/MJ
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A bit AU after TW "Children of Men".  The survivors tell their stories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Tales The Old Men Tell

At the Three Feathers, somewhere near dinnertime, whenever dinnertime was, the old men would gather at their table in the corner. They never came in together, but they never went there each by themselves; one only came if the other two did. Sometimes it was once a week, sometimes twice; once, when the grizzled man whose hair had once been blond, had been in hospital, none of them had been there for nearly a month. And then all of them had come back on a Wednesday night, and all was well again.

"What are you ordering?" asked the grizzled one, clutching onto his ale, of the other two.

"Fish, chips, mushy peas." That was the plump one answering.

"You always order that."

"Can't help it; I like it."

"Spag bol, I suppose," ventured the last of the three. "You?"

"Me? Dunno. Probably bangers and mash. It's good here, you know; not greasy like some places."

The three nodded. The plump one looked off into the distance. "Greasy. Remember the night we went after the weevils by the old church, and we stopped at that one old pub by the corner there? Never saw so much grease on food in my life."

The third man ruminated for a minute. "Never saw so much grease, period. I think they must have been running a biodiesel conversion center with all that fat."

"You don't like fat anyway, that's why you order spag bol and salads and things like that," said the plump one. "Now, ask me, fat's a food group."

"Ever see an adipose?" The other two looked with interest at the third, and with curiosity. "Living beings. All made from fat. The little ones, they're like chubby babies, or fat puppies. Priceless, really. The Doctor met them. Him and Donna – did either of you ever meet Donna?"

All muttered negatives to the question. "Supposed to have been something, she was. Tart as a lemon, but she wound up absorbing the Doctor's brain somehow. Made her the smartest human that ever lived. Couldn't handle it – he had to wipe her brain. But she's the one who actually saved everything back when the planet got dragged off back when."

"Oh, right," said the first man. "I heard about her. Ought to be statues in the street everywhere – why aren't there?"  
"She can't ever know who she is, mate," the second replied, waving out to the waitress for another Guinness. "If she's still alive. You wipe someone's mind, then put up a monument, they're bound to figure out it's for them, and there, bam, kiss your mind-wipe goodbye."

"That happened to Gwen," the third volunteered. "Couple of small prompts and there went the retcon."

"Didn't know about that," replied the first. "Now, there was that time she'd said she wasn't engaged for a day and then suddenly she was back, right as rain."

"Bloody mess," the second man agreed. "Did anyone ever figure out what did that?"

"Somehow or other, it seems as if everyone who'd been at the Hub lost two whole days."

The second man nodded to the third. "Even Himself couldn't figure that out. Wonder why he never asked the Doctor."

"Wrong kind of Doctor, I think," the third replied. "The Doctor was a piss-poor mind reader, if you ask me."

"There was a perfectly good doctor around, until the explosions back when," the grizzled man grumbled. "That woman after him was good, too – either one was probably better than the Doctor for that sort of thing."

"Neither of them worked it out, though," one of them muttered. "Still, what's two days?"

"At our age? Half of our remaining lives," the plump man chuckled as a plate of fish landed on the table in front of him.

"Back then, though," the third said, "two days was nothing. Live fast, die young – but we didn't, though, did we."

"Nope," said the second. "Should have done, though. Dead by thirty and all that. We're the ones who survived it."

"For what? To be three old pensioners alone together, talking shite about the good old days that nearly killed us."

"Killed everyone else," the third man said, stirring a freshly delivered plate of spaghetti as he talked. "Owen, Tosh, then finally Gwen – sorry, Rhys – and Martha."

"'s all right," Rhys assured Ianto as he began breaking fish apart, and as Andy stirred some red onion gravy into his potatoes. "At least Gwen and I'd had Kieran and Kerri. You're the one who lost the most."

Ianto Jones shrugged at the other two. "He never did see a relationship through. The others – his wife, then Estelle – he left because they didn't know he couldn't age. I knew it, I told him I didn't care. I suppose he did, though – though I'll never know if it was because he couldn't take my aging or he couldn't believe I didn't care that he couldn't. Still… people leave, people die, that's how the world is. What I still can't forgive him for was leaving – and once again, no notice, just messages I found after he'd gone – and sticking me with the job, thank you very much. Don't know what I'd have done right away if you two hadn't cast your lot in with the crew back then. At least it's run properly any more, though I do peek in around once a month to make sure they haven't wrecked the archives again."

The waitress brought a fresh cider to Andy as he responded to Ianto. She served them almost every time she came in, and the tales they told – well, the Cardiff explosions had been something, her gram said, and all the older folk everywhere remembered when the earth had moved… but these three, well, their tales of the old days were taller than everyone else's, weren't they?

She moved along with her tray to a nearby booth, bringing another man a glass of water. He wasn't bad-looking for a man in his forties, she supposed; still, charming as his smile was, he was far too old for her. He'd be more comfortable if he took that big military coat off. On the rare times he came in, it was for sandwiches, and always that water; he never drank anything else, and he didn't like their coffee. He looked as if he had a few stories to share himself, it was the haunted look in the eyes that did it. Tonight though, he seemed to be eavesdropping on the old men at the corner table, and their nonsense about the old days, and he looked more hurt than haunted, for once.

A plate with a hot sandwich and crisps found its way to the man's table. "Anything else I can get you?"

"A map with the way home on it. I've lost myself so many times I don't think I know how to get there anymore."

"Sorry, love," she replied. "Best I can do is sticky toffee pudding." Then she smiled for a second. "When you've been away too long to get back home, sometimes all you can do is find a new one."

"Right," he told her. "And I'll have the sticky toffee pudding tonight, thanks." Reaching into his coat pocket, he pulled out a leather strap he hadn't worn in years. The device inside it had been decommissioned by a sonic screwdriver for a second time years before, but perhaps he hadn't tried hard enough to fix it when he'd still thought he had everything – when Tosh and Owen were barely gone, when Gwen and Rhys had dropped twins off for him to babysit with Ianto, when Martha had been brilliant on a regular basis… when he'd still been a hero and not one of the walking wounded.

Four and nine – that was what it had been before. He programmed the numbers back in, watched the oscillation… yes, it might work, it just might.  
He scattered a sprinkling of notes from his wallet; as soon as he'd finished his pudding, he would be gone.

Three men who had not arrived at the same time rose from their dinner at the same moment, moving chairs and replacing them, laying their money neatly at their seats. They exited along a row of booths.

"Good lord," Ianto said. "Did you see –"

"What?" Andy asked.

"I could swear there was a man at that booth a second ago – looked a bit like Jack, actually… he's gone, but he didn't go anywhere."

"Must be a negative rift spike," Rhys said knowingly, patting Ianto's back. "Best get out of here before it gets us, too."

"Agreed." Ianto followed his old friend to the door as Andy hailed a cab to take the three of them home.


End file.
